


worshipping the irreverent (we're all sinners anyway)

by celestique



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, Not Canon Compliant, Not Really Character Death, Reunions, Why Did I Write This?, i dont even watch this show, is this a rare-pair, not smut but it does get kinda spicy i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 07:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestique/pseuds/celestique
Summary: the fairytales and folk songs say the boys who make promises come back. sometimes, they're older. sometimes, they're wiser. sometimes, they bring riches. sometimes, they bring the clothes on their back. the one thing the stories stay consistent on is this: they always find their way home.-In which Roman Torchwick survives, and they blaze hell anyway.





	worshipping the irreverent (we're all sinners anyway)

**Author's Note:**

> funny thing the last time i watched rwby was volume 3's finale like 3 years ago? i literally know nothing about this show and i don't remember a single thing but i guess i'm writing a gelato fic. idk i like the characters themselves, and i ship them and i like the fanart and their dynamic. i also researched on the brunswick farm theory and i dig it so im using that here. i also haven't actually wrote smut or anything really spicy so this is also new. and i haven't written fanfic in forever. 
> 
> tldr this might be ooc, might not be accurate to canon events, and might be poorly written. so yeah this is gonna be a mess and i'm sorry.

_"Just think about it, Rosemary. One day, you and me? We'll be kings and queens."_

She remembers it far too well - green eyes, bright and shining, ginger hair too tousled to ever be set right, a smile of someone up to no good. They were children once too, and she remembers the promises he'd sing across the fields and before the gates. Kings and queens, Rowan had told her, eager in ways only children could be. 

How could she deny such a possibility, told from the lips of a voice like honey and silk? He knew what he wanted, and he had shone so brightly because of it. The day he'd promised her, it was underneath an open sky, and the sun itself faltered from the brilliance in Rowan Brunswick's emerald eyes. 

He is a beautiful boy, a girl once called Rosemary thinks, as she looks at him like someone reborn. He is a beautiful boy, she believes, as the sunlight catches his apricot hair, the burnt citrus shade she would memorize in her sleep.

In the fairytales and folk songs, this is when someone falls in love. But she knows little of love - the last she'd known of it was spread out on a bed, charred and dead.

We'll be kings and queens, a boy once called Rowan had told her. And she'd have ventured heaven and hell for him, for all the days. Until they were kings and queens no longer. Until they were sprinkled ashes on golden tombs, greater than the legacies would say. Until a farmboy and a farmgirl are known by the world itself, wearing crowns taken and crowns earned. The Apathy may have left the world they knew a wasteland, the aftermath of a plague and fire and brimstone, but there is still a world for them to take. 

Together, this time.

 _"Rosemary, come on! Think about it, please. We have to go. You and me, kings and queens, I swear. I promise."_ Tears stream down his cheeks as they glance at the old house again. She does not want to think of the remnants the Apathy left behind. She only wants to think of him, as he clutches on to the sides of her face, murmuring oaths and promises for her and her alone.

She opens her umbrella to give him shade from the sun.

* * *

In the aftermath of the battle, there is a silence Neo does not appreciate. She knows of quiet, more so than others, more so than celebratory. She had failed him - Roman, dear Roman - and it was the faintest slip. She falls and she lands and the umbrella hangs from her wrist once more.

She cannot see the plane anymore. She cannot see him, or the girl, but that's okay, Neo believes. They have always escaped. There was always a hidden door, another path, a buried way. She's not idealistic - not anymore - but when the odds have always favored you and luck had always let you free, you can't help but believe in some sort of fortune and possibility. 

Roman Torchwick is not a man for death. He was clever, more than any could notice. He was intelligent, as far as the eye could see. He could escape death quicker than a boy jumped a candlestick - and after all, hadn't he promised her they'd be kings and queens?

 _"Roman, come in,"_ she types into her communicator. It was one of the first heists they had undertaken, and it was old, distressed. She never changed it, not even after he offers her newer models - shinier ones, better ones.

Perhaps she was sentimental.

_"I've landed right outside the city. It's infested. Come in."_

Grimm at every corner, bloodshed and strife painting the once immaculate city of Vale into something out of a novel. It's a terrifying sight for a child, horrible in its gore and tragedy, but Neo was no child. 

_"Roman?"_

There is no response.

There is only quiet.

_"Roman."_

She doesn't know why she keeps sending messages, but there is a gnawing, sinking feeling in her chest. This is not how the story ends. Roman promised her plenty. Roman promised. She remembers how he shouts her name when she gets whisked away in the height of the battle - _"NEO!"_ \- but she's here. And she's here. And she's here.

A traitorous tear falls down her cheek, and the last time Neo cried, she was a child and their farm was a slaughterhouse for the Apathy. She had lost everything she ever knew then, but there was _him_. Always him.

She knows what it means, but she does not believe this silence. They had found their way a thousand different times. What makes this any different? 

The fairytales and folk songs say the boys who make promises come back. Sometimes, they're older. Sometimes, they're wiser. Sometimes, they bring riches. Sometimes, they bring the clothes on their back. The one thing the stories stay consistent on is this: they always find their way home.

Roman would find his way to her, and she to him. That's how it goes, that's how they operate. He still needed his getaway driver, didn't he?

_"One day, you and me? We'll be kings and queens."_

Neo glances at her communicator again, at all the messages she'd sent. Then she looks to the burning city once more, a heavy lump on her throat. She does not cry - he wouldn't want her to. And he's still there, somewhere.

She'd believed she'd venture heaven and hell for him. 

This was as close as they'd get to hell, anyway.

The girl navigates through the wreckage, through the Grimm and the Huntsmen and the corpses and the fire. She's back in the destruction, back in the chaos, heaving and bloody and lost and _where's Roman?_

There, a Grimm rammed to the wall, a wisp away from her. There, a Huntsman fending off a hoard of monsters with their guns and swords and scythes and blades and arrows and shields. There's so many, and she's so small, and it reminds her of Brunswick again.

Roman. She had to find Roman. She had to bring him back. She had to get them away.

Neo runs. The walls explode, the gunshots sing, bells toll, and so many things happen all at once. This is a warzone. This is chaos. 

She runs and runs and runs, gliding through the battlefield like a ballet dancer on stage. She wants to claw at her throat, the stinging raw feeling within her growing until it's suffocating. She wants to crawl into a corner, press her fingers to her forehead and scream his name, desperate and uncertain and for the first time in a long while, Neo finds herself terrified for what comes after and what comes now.

She finds an alcove hidden from the wreckage, deep inside an abandoned alleyway, and her small frame allows her inside. There's more gunshots, more screams, more fighting, but none belong to Roman - her Roman, so she sinks to the floor. She wants to cry. She wants to shout. But she _can't_.

_Romanromanromanromanromanromanromanromanromanromanromanro -_

"Neo?"

Hearing her name on a familiar tongue is like waking up from a bad dream. She lifts her head to the space between them, her and he who had found her, and for a moment she's scared that it is not _him_ who is waiting in that exit. For a moment, she wonders if the smoke had gotten to her, that this is all her own mind, that the person before her is someone else - like Mercury, or Emerald, or Cinder. 

Part of her believes that. Part of her hates that she does.

"My clever girl, what are you doing there?"

The smoke clears, and the world goes silent, and it is here she sees Emerald.

No, not Emerald.

Eyes of emerald, one covered by burnt citrus hair.

She mouths a word, just five letters long - the very same word that brought her here. Into the abyss, into the fire, and he stands there, Roman, immaculate and bloody both in one. He stands there, before the bloodshed and the chaos. His coat is torn, sleeves stained with red - his, she guesses - and he's gripping on to his cane like a lifeline.

He is a beautiful boy, Neo thinks, even when he's covered in sweat and blood and dust. Even in the battlefield, he's lovely, and she is in love, all over again.

So she steps out of the alcove and wraps him into an embrace so tight, it's like holding on to dear life. Her cheeks are wet, and so is his sleeved shoulder. She's far too small, and so her feet get lifted off the ground and he returns the embrace in stride. He lifts her off her feet, and they are reunited.

"It's okay, Neo. I'm here. We're okay."

She holds on to him tighter, amidst the battle and the ruin. If she lets go, he's gone again, and she does not want to lose even the ghost. 

_STAY WITH ME_ , her fingertips trace onto his back.

He taps on hers in reply. _EVEN AFTER KINGS AND QUEENS._ It's a promise that only she understands, both in the literal and the figurative. Her heart leaps at the feeling, at the familiar rhythm of his hands on her back - clothed, otherwise. Roman's here. He's _here_.

When she finally makes herself pull away, her arms move to the back of his neck. She looks at him, then, memorizing every inch of his face with two-toned eyes. There's blood on his cheek, and she's so tempted to wipe it away with her thumb, like some lover's caress. She takes him in - her Roman - bruised and bloody and breathing, and her mouth parts to say something.

Instead she pushes herself forward, pulling herself to his gravity. She kisses him then and there, in this Grimm-infested battlefield, amidst the chaos and strife. She kisses him like the world is ending, pulling him closer and closer until there is no space between them. He returns this with fervor, wrapping her close as her fingers dig into his hair, under his hat.

 _YOU'RE ALIVE_ , Neo traces at the back of his neck with her other hand. It doesn't matter if this is death. It doesn't matter if this is chaos. What matters is that Roman is here, with her, and she was kissing him in hell itself.

"And so are you, my clever girl," he replies in between kisses. She knows him well enough to recognize how when his voice drops like that, when he cooes just a little bit, it's in relief. She feels his relief like she'd feel warm sunlight on her skin

But this is better. 

Her legs wrap around his hips, tugging him further to her. Roman pauses for a moment, exhaling a laugh as their foreheads touch. When he looks her in the eyes, there's electricity in her veins. "Ah, and eager too, aren't you?" He teases.

She loves him a little more.

_WHY NOT?_

They were damned anyway. This would just be another sin in a long list. She doesn't care about where they are, and neither does him, she believes. They were damned anyway, so what was another addition in the judgment scroll? Roman was here. That's what mattered.

So maybe this felt like a fairytale and a folk song, where a boy who makes a promise learns to come back. Where a farmboy and a farmgirl become so much more, and think the other gone, but find their way together again. Where love is here, and love is true, and she kisses him in full again, full of reverence and passion and so much more. She cannot tell him how lost and terrified she felt only moments before, with him gone and gone and gone, but she can make him know it in each kiss. In each pull.

So maybe this followed the order of a fairytale and a folk song.

Doesn't mean it had to be so chaste.

Roman presses her back to the wall next to the alcove, and she connects against the travertine with a softer sound than one may expect, and she lets him. She lets him toy with the buttons of her coat. He lets her urge him on, enough but not quite. She lets him swat her own wandering fingers away. He lets her bite his lower lip in revenge, echoing a laugh. They know each other well, they know each secret and each action and reaction. They're familiar with their bodies, far more than in intimacy and in combat. 

After all, they were two halves of a whole.

 _DUM-DUM,_ she writes in his back as his lips drift to the side of her neck. Pleasure and joy wrap around her in the feeling, for both the action and him. His hair is ticklish against her throat, but she wouldn't have it any other way. _NEVER DO THAT AGAIN._

He stops, and she controls the urge to roll her eyes.

_NEVER LEAVE ME._

This is real. Incredibly, unfathomably real as the man with her. As real as the skin she traces upon and the kisses he steals. She holds Roman Torchwick to a certain reverence no god can contain, and when he kisses her like this, she knows he sees it.

 _WHEN WOULD I EVER, SWEETHEART?_ , he traces back, into the edges of her waist, the lines where she ends and begins. It makes her body shiver - this intimacy, this closeness. Delight, pleasure, relief, fear, all in one. She believes him when he says this, but doesn't say it. Roman likes talking, but even he can recognize the value here, in this kind of quiet.

He sees her, and this, and how she feels for him is brighter than any sun. How she feels for him is not a spark to be smothered - never will be. Whatever divinity lay past the wartorn sky above them must favor the two, because in every stunt they've pulled, even now they have this.

They're just two broken people, trying to not be broken together. This is the Apathy all over again, and Brunswick, but they have each other. That's good enough for her.

He touches her, igniting her veins, and it's marvelous and new and not. He touches her collarbone, her jaw, the curves of her body, there and everywhere and it doesn't matter if her clothes are still on. He touches her, and Neo feels in ways only Roman Torchwick can emit from her. It didn't matter how much she wore - like this, in front of him, she's more vulnerable and naked than she can ever believe. 

It excites her. 

The world could end, could fall apart to fire and brimstone and everything and nothing, and she wouldn't mind it. Not with him here. Her fingers dance above the edges of his cheek, still coated in soot and blood. He does not wince when she wipes it off - gentle, careful - betraying none of the giddiness she feels. She forces it down, forces herself to focus.

When Roman kisses her again, she could swear she tastes blood.

But no, she doesn't mind that at all.

"Shall we continue this later?" Roman asks her at some point during the euphoria, while the gunshots still ring and the battle still roars and they were still hidden away, tucked at the corners of an alley. He lets go of her then, helping her to land on the ground, before dusting off his coat. He taps the head of his cane, in thought.

Neo nods, and intertwines her fingers with his own, if only for a moment.

Let them have this.

The smirk on his features is one not too dissimilar to the one she first fell in love with. The glint in his eye promises mischief yet done. The sky paints his burnt citrus hair into something of radiance, something lovely and divine. There's no need for him to offer her his hand, because she clasps it close.

No longer was he a boy named Rowan Brunswick, young farmboy. No longer was she a girl named Rosemary, small farmgirl. They had traded those names long ago, for something better, for something grander. When she holds on to him, Neo thinks about that again, that whisper of a new life. A new beginning. A new story. This was to promise of kings and queens, reunited and found once more.

"Let's get the hell out of here, then."

She grins at him in response.

_WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?_


End file.
